The primary and secondary objectives of the Early Developmental Stages of Substance Abuse Study (EDSP) are described along with a detailed description of the overall design, special design features and instruments used. The EDSP is a 5-year prospective study with three waves of assessments. Special design features are the linkages with family genetic investigations as well as neuroendocrinologi...

Many natural and artificial decision-making systems face decision problems where there is an inherent compromise between two or more objectives. One such common compromise is between the speed and accuracy of a decision. The ability to exploit the characteristics of a decision problem in order to vary between the extremes of making maximally rapid, or maximally accurate decisions, is a useful p...

Multiple program specialization can stage a computation into several computation phases. This paper presents an eective solution for multiple program specialization by generalizing conventional o-line partial evaluation and integrating the \cogen approach" with a multi-level binding-time analysis. This novel \multi-cogen approach" solves two fundamental problems of self-applicable partial evalu...

Given the growing attention on how environmental and policy interventions can affect chronic disease burden, our objectives are to describe (a) effective and promising interventions to address tobacco use, physical activity, and healthy eating and (b) lessons learned from the literature and practice experience in applying environmental and policy approaches. A total of 17 interventions were rev...

Perspective A series of prominent and controversial papers about the state of marine ecosystems has occupied the pages of high-profile journals over the last decade [1–7]. While some might quarrel with the specific conclusions of these papers, there is no dispute that managers of ocean and coastal habitats confront a growing diversity of very serious challenges [8] that, if left unattended, thr...

Presented at ISPOR 18th Annual European Congress, Milan, 7th – 11th November 2015, Milan UPDATE ● The major 5 European markets all operate socialised healthcare systems. In each there are different structures and organisations in place to assess the value of medical interventions, and a number of different decision makers who act on the basis of these assessments to ensure efficient use of heal...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Both the Meyer and Raymond scales are commonly used to report angiographic outcomes following coil embolization of intracranial aneurysms. The objectives of this study were the following: 1) to assess the interobserver agreement of the Meyer and Raymond scales, and 2) to evaluate and compare their performance in predicting major recurrence at follow-up. MATERIALS AND ME...

The primary aims of this review are to document capability applications in the health field and to explore the objectives and decision-rules of studies measuring capability more broadly. Relevant studies are identified using a literature search strategy known as "comprehensive pearl growing". All studies with a primary focus on health are assessed individually, whilst a summary narrative analys...

Problem statement: Two methods for performance appraisal that are discussed in this study and they are Management By Objective (MBO) and Assessment Centre techniques. Employees are appraised for several reasons, the most important of which is to realize the best use of human resources and to plan for future needs; reward and punishment are secondary. Assessment Centre evaluation or appraisal is...

Rüter is an important model for getting at the analysis of processes that I recently discussed in the Editor's Corner. 1 The authors identified a list of performance indicators that were used for evaluation of the coordination and control processes used during the responses to a simulated aircraft crash. 2 The indicators selected were obtained from multiple sources. Although all of the indicato...